Clapping on a child’s chest to release the disease’s telltale thick mucus is a long standing treatment for Cystic Fibrosis. It does help, but discoveries in biomedical research are now leading to the development of new therapeutics which can target the molecular defect.

A new study led by a team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and Cystic Fibrosis Canada reinforces the benefits of newborn screening for cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Despite the fact that newborn screening has been implemented across North America and in several European countries as a way to improve overall survival rate and health outcomes of people living with CF, it is still not available in Quebec.